In Canada a federal election is on the horizon, and the prospects are looking decidedly bad. The Liberals (big “L”) are down because they did some bad things and everyone is angry. Our two right-wing parties (the ALLIANCE and the PROGRESSSIVE CONSERVATIVES, completely whack and just bad respectively) have joined power-rings to make the mysteriously even MORE right-wingCONSERVATIVE (big “C”) party.

See, normally the liberals win a lot, do something bad, and the tories (prog. cons.) take over for a few years before the liberals take it back. Not ideal but reasonable, and the PC has always shown restraint and at least remained Canadian in shape and direction.

But the New Right does not guarantee even that. They want to make Canada the quainter United-States, boasting policies that even the previous leader of the Progessive Conservatives, Joe Clarke, has said constitute a “scary vision of canada”.
I of course will be voting for the NDP (New Democratic Party, the Left), who have mysteriously and amazingly chosen a friend of mine as the representative for my riding (of course, the Liberals will win here, guaranteed, but the thought is still nice). The NDP will not win the government though, despite their niceness, largely because they have done seemingly reckless things when they’ve taken control of provinces.

So we are left with the Liberals, normally dead center of the question (for Canada. They would of course constitute revolutionaries were they 200km to the south) but lately a bit right, and the Conservatives, terrifyingly right and threatening to have far too much power because of the general anger towards the economically philandering Liberals. A scary thing.

All this to get to the real point, being that for my current employment I have been calling people in the Carribbean, asking for them by name, and trying to make them do a survey, and yesterday I talked to someone in Jamaica who’s name was Stephen Harper, which is the same as the name of the leader of the Conservatives, and he was a big freakin’ jerk.

Which of course is unquestionable proof that people named Stephen Harper, internationally and pan-continentially, are big freakin’ jerks.

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9 Comments

GO DANNY!
I too will be voting NDP. Not just because Danny is running, but because they are the only party that make sense. Some people i know wonder why i am voting NDP when it is obvious they won’t win? Politics and Voting are not about picking the winner, its about picking the candidate you want to win.
PS: GO DANNY!

jason

Hi Jer,

The Progressive Conservatives weren’t actually all that far right — hence the ‘progressive’ in their name. They were nothing like Republicans, say, since they supported health care and welfare and unemployment insurance, etc. If my memory isn’t deceiving me, they may have even been responsible for some of this ‘governmenal largess.’ So, far-right they ain’t.

Their better natures kept them far askance from the decidedly right wing and socially conservative Reform/Alliance party, but eventually losing the the Liberals got to them, and got to the Alliance.

It’s good to recall that the Alliance party was named so because it was supposed to be an alliance between the Reform and PC parties. It goes to show how difficult the merger has been.

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But, anyway, imo, Stephen Harper is a threat, as you probably can guess from my politics. The Conservative ‘Law and Order’ platform is scary. If they win, or take a minority government with the help of those traitors The Bloc Quebecois (and I mean traitors to the progressive, tolerant cause), I will seriously consider taking the rest of my university in Europe starting 2006. The fact is I left Alberta for a reason, and the idea of having Alberta running the country for 4 or 5 years is really frightening. There is really no way to soften religiously motivated social cleansing. No matter what Harper says about ignoring the abortion issue, or softening their stance on gay rights, you know that every time they can get away with changing things, they will try to turn back the clock.

There is absolutely nothing stopping him from going on a crusade against obscenity and child pornography, both of which are the anthema of the arts community, because of the way they restrict freedom of expression and speech, not to mention how it effects sexual minorities, and their ability to create communities, publish political materials, etc. People think the child pornography bill is actually about child pornography. That’s how it’s sold, but it’s also about controlling political groups, and free expression on the internet. Read up about ‘advocates and counsels’, a phrase that can be applied with Orwellian aprecision to justify almost any reading.

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My own inclinations is towards the NDP, which haven’t really been as bad provincally as some. They are typically notorious for running up debts — but then that is the typical attack on socialist governments. All governments are hated eventually, but they are less socially destructive, imo, than those provincial right-wing governments masquarading under the Liberal banner in BC and Quebec.

But, I won’t vote NDP this election. In Quebec, I vote PQ and Bloc, as may not suprise you. I think Quebec would be better served by not having to find a middle ground between the extremism of Alberta and, what I view to be, the more accepting and tolerant perspectives in Quebec. But that is what has to happen in Canada. I say, let Alberta have it’s own government, and Quebec can have it’s own, and everything necessary can be agreed upon via international treaties.

Ah – so you’d rather have the NDP, who will completely break the country with their unrealistic social ideals, in power than the Conservatives who are fiscally responsible.

If you think the new Conservative party is farther right than the Alliance you are either relying on stereotype alone to make that statement, or you are completely loopy. Harper is a social conservative – as distasteful as that is – however he is tempering his own personal views in favor of the PC wing of the party, which is much closer to the center.

Throw away your vote to the NDP if you must, but try not to spread too much disinformation in the process, huh?

jason

jer

without meaning to imply that anyone touting a conservative agenda is being paid by those in power, i’d just say that such accusations don’t fall so far from the truth.

Vonnegut describes the political situation in america (on a different scale but comparible to what we have here) as one where there are Haves and HaveNots. Forget republicans and democrats. There are those who have and don’t want to share and those who lack and want what they need.

furthermore, there are those who’s sense of decency and morality is so far off from what being human is actually like that it could scarcely matter less how fiscally responsible they would be were they in power. They should be slowed if not stopped. And the idea that they could come into control of a nation simply because they arent’ the Liberals is the scariest thought of all.

Andrew, your blog goes through the stats about the polling situation right? well i do polling. I don’t know if your source mentioned this but most of the people who say they’re voting conservative don’t know fuck all about what the party actually stands for. They’ve got no concept at all of how completely uncanadian their worldview is. They are answering based solely on the idea that once in a while we go to the other party to keep things straight, without noticing that the other party has become something essentially without precedent.

This is scary, andrew, because i don’t think that the conservatives truly deserve to be voted into anything. this is a moment where democracy threatens to fail. and to fail in ways that could fuck canada for a long time.

(p.s. what ever happened to Doris? We need more conservatives making fools of themselves.)

michaelm

I don’t trust Stephen Harper. Belinda Stronach should not trust him never. I’m an NDPer my self.
Belinda Stronach seamd not very happy with the Conservatives because of her views and ideas are more like a Social Democrat then Conservative. The NDP will benifit from her views and ideas. Jack Layton needs Belinda Stronach in his caucus like yesterday.